And he wanted to weep, because for all Megan’s family had made it possible for him to court her, he was still bound for Scotland.
“Your smile when you behold my daughter is …” Lady Anthony bent to sniff at a precocious sprig of honeysuckle. “You put me in mind of my husband when we were courting. We feared our union would not meet with the approval of our parents, and we were making plans … Well, that’s a tale for another time. You have exactly thirty minutes, Murdoch, before Megan will be summoned to take tea with her Papa and me. Use your thirty minutes wisely.”
“Yes, your ladyship, and safe journey, ma’am.”
Lady Anthony kissed Hamish’s cheek—the Windhams were an affectionate family, when they weren’t violent—and glided away. She said something to Megan, squeezed her daughter’s hand, and disappeared into the house on an elegant rustle of green velvet.
Megan lifted her skirts, as if she’d descend the steps in imitation of her mother’s dignity, but then she sprinted across the garden and smacked into Hamish’s waiting embrace.
They were visible from the house, so Hamish merely held her, and treasured the lovely, luscious feel of her in his arms. Her crown fit beneath his chin, her breasts—
He stepped back. “Megan Windham, I owe you an apology. I ought not to have been kissing you where anybody could chance upon us. I ought not to have—”
She kissed his cheek. “I ought not to have taken such a risk either, but I’d love to kiss you all over again. Will you court me, Hamish MacHugh, or will you flee to Scotland?”
He wished she were wearing the blue spectacles, or maybe that he could wear them. Anything to obscure the hope in her eyes, and the trust.
“Meggie, nothing has changed. I’m not the man for you. I’d take you away from everything you know and care for, to a place where winter can start in September and go on until May. My siblings do nothing but bicker. You’d grow bored—”
She wound her arm around his. “My siblings bicker and I’ve been bored for years. What aren’t you telling me? The truth, Hamish, for I would very much like you to court me.”
The truth—the most dangerous weapon ever turned on a man’s good intentions. “We will talk, and you will listen, and then you’ll bid me farewell.”
Silence was another weapon an intelligent woman wielded with great skill, and Megan was a very intelligent woman. She wandered with him to the benches around the sundial, and took a seat, pulling him down beside her. His hip was throbbing, but the bench was warm—some consolation, that.
“Why would you want a man like me for a husband, Meggie? I’m not … I’m not polished. I’m not English. I don’t intend to be very good at this duke-ing business, and I am fond of a good Highland whisky.”
“My mother is not English, Sir Fletcher is very polished, and as for the duke-ing, you’ve done a fine job of being a gentleman, so what does the duke part matter? I rather enjoyed sampling your whisky myself.”
Logic should be forbidden to marriageable women. “Meggie, you think because I pilfered a few letters from a desk drawer that I’m some sort of knight errant. I’m nothing like a knight errant.”
“You learned to waltz so you wouldn’t embarrass your sisters. That’s the behavior of a gallant fellow, Murdoch.”
“I like to dance—most Scots do—and waltzing isn’t complicated.”
She raised her face to the sun, which would have set Ronnie and Eddie running for their bonnets and parasols—or ordering Hamish to fetch them.
“Am I so awful, Hamish? I thought you liked me.”
“You are lovely.” Her eyes closed, her chin tilted up toward the sun’s warmth, her freckles on view for any man within kissing distance to see … Hamish’s chest ached, and something like rage stirred at the thought of leaving her alone on that bench in … about twenty-three minutes, according to the sundial.
“What are you trying to protect me from?” Megan asked, opening her eyes and peering at him with the merciless sagacity of a cat. “That’s the only reason I can think of for you to abandon me now. You believe whatever retaliation Sir Fletcher will seek, whatever risks I’m facing now, your hand in marriage somehow trumps those fates for awfulness. You owe me an explanation, Hamish. Friends are honest with each other.”
Friends. Friends did not skewer each other with impossible demands for truth.
An inconvenient voice in Hamish’s head insisted friends didn’t ride off to Scotland without an explanation either.
“I’m trying to protect you from me, Meggie,” Hamish said. “Ask your soldier cousins, and they’ll tell you I have a reputation for violence and cowardice, both. I dodge the battles I ought to wage, and yet, once engaged, I’m a savage. I kill for pleasure according to some, and when I should have died fighting, I surrendered myself into enemy hands instead. I’m no kind of soldier, and they’re right. I hated the whole business, and you’ll hate being my duchess too.”
My duchess. The words alone brought him delight when he associated them with her.
She took his hand, which in a courting situation was permitted.
“I’m glad you didn’t die fighting. Your siblings are glad you didn’t die fighting, as are all those people up in Perthshire who depend on you. Who are these blind idiots that think death is such a wonderful accomplishment? Death is within anybody’s grasp. The greater challenge is to live, and to love despite our errors and failings. Be glad you didn’t die, Hamish MacHugh. Maybe you had some bad moments, or you harbor regrets—I surely do. But be very glad you didn’t die.”
Between one quiet moment and the next, a queer feeling suffused Hamish, as if without Megan’s hand to hold, he might have lifted into the air and dissolved into the sunshine. As if Megan’s words had lit some taper inside him that longed to join with the greater warmth of the sun’s light.
I’m glad you didn’t die fighting.
“You are a woman of original and passionate sentiments.”
She said nothing, but kept a fierce hold of his hand. The words errant and error had the same root, both meaning to wander. Hamish’s heart had been wandering since he’d bought his commission, and for the first time, he had a sense of homecoming. Not coming back to familiar territory, but coming home.
He sat beside her for eleven more minutes, his backside throbbing, wonder suffusing his every breath. The sense of benediction would not leave him, the sense of an insight granted when most needed, the sense that Megan would not fail him.
I’m glad you didn’t die fighting.
“My superior officers called me an animal,” he told her. “They said the French should have put me down like a rabid dog.”
She rested her head on his shoulder. “Your fellow officers said this?”
“I’ve killed with my bare hands, Meggie.” He’d never said those words to another, he should not have said them now. They hurt in a whole new way, leaving sorrow and bewilderment where disgrace had been. “In the heat of battle, true, but half the regiments on both sides saw me do it, and I think the British were more horrified than the French.” Hamish forced more words out, lest Megan think society’s view of him was in error.
“We were to be gentlemanly about our warfare, if you can believe that. Wellington insisted. No plundering the countryside, no firing on the French pickets, and they didn’t fire on us. Battles were orderly in their way—artillery, cavalry, and infantry, in that sequence. You might shoot a man, even an unarmed man, take him down with a weapon, but you didn’t … you didn’t put your hands around his neck, and end his life in an instant when he’s thrown his weapon aside.”
Megan said nothing, so Hamish soldiered on. “I did exactly that. He had no gun, not even his bayonet to defend himself, but he wouldna get out of my way. I put my hands on him, and then he was dead.”
Now, Megan would get up, shake out her skirts, and wish Hamish a safe journey to Scotland. She’d look at him with horror, or worse—unbearably worse—pity. Hamish would spend his entire journey trying to out-gallop the tem
ptation to drink himself to death.
Megan gave him more of her weight, as if exhaustion afflicted her, even so early in the day.
“Does one go to war hoping a fellow officer is proficient at the minuet?” she asked in the same tones she might have inquired about tuning the bagpipes. “Would waltzing have defeated the Corsican? Fine manners? An excellent tenor aria? Skill at whist, for God’s sake? Your fellow officers were likely afraid of you and of their own demises. Their cowardice is not your problem. The war is over, Hamish.”
That queer feeling washed over Hamish again. Part shiver, part warmth, part bewilderment. Wellington had preferred that his officers know how to waltz. On that bit of military lore, Hamish’s resolve to leave the lady to enjoy the rest of her London season without him caught, snagged, stumbled, and … collapsed.
Waltzing had not vanquished Napoleon. Many said the entire victory at Waterloo had turned on one Scottish officer’s willingness to plunge headlong through French fire to save the British forces holding a strategic chateau.
The war is over, Hamish. Nobody had said that to him either.
“I hated the battles,” Hamish murmured, kissing Megan’s fingers. “Hated the sieges, the false bravery, the stink of fear, the smell of blood. I hated the noise and the violence. I hated every minute of it.”
But he loved her. Hamish loved that Megan Windham, who was brave in ways his fellow officers would have failed to see, could hear this confession.
“Any sane person should hate war,” Megan said.
Hamish had hated war with a passion, though no soldier admitted that to his fellows.
“Meggie, if I court you, it will be in complete earnest. Not for show, not for a lark. I will offer you my wealth, my title, my family.” And because she inspired courage in him, “I’ll offer you my heart—yours, and yours alone, forevermore. If that’s what you want?”
She sighed a soft, happy sigh and smoothed a hand over his thigh. “I give you permission to pay me your addresses, Hamish, and I will accept nothing less than a courtship in complete earnest.”
He’d never court another. Megan had heard the worst that would be said about him, and was still right there at his side.
“The war is over, Meggie Windham. You’re absolutely right about that. Let the courtship begin.”
Chapter Eleven
You’re very decorous about this courtship business,” Anwen observed. “If I had that much Scottish duke to cast longing glances at, I’d be bribing my sisters to lose sight of me while picnicking at Richmond Park, or to suddenly need a book from the library when my suitor came to call.”
Longing glances had been the sum of Megan’s amorous undertakings where Hamish MacHugh was concerned. Ever since he’d been caught kissing her in the garden, he’d been maddeningly proper, never dancing with her more than once an evening, never holding her an inch closer than propriety allowed.
At Richmond, his brother Colin had been more flirtatious than he had.
“I’m torn,” Megan said, pushing the cover back from the piano keys. “Part of me wants to gobble him whole, Anwen. Another part of me wants to stand absolutely still and marvel that not only do I have a suitor, but I have one I admire greatly.” One who treated her with every evidence of esteem.
Megan would rather a bit more passion and less esteem, though.
Anwen came down beside her on the piano bench. “You truly fancy him?”
Truly, passionately, endlessly—and intimately. “You don’t like Murdoch?”
“He’s impressive,” Anwen said. “Not pretty, not fancy, not clever, not … ornamental. I approve of him all the more for being in want of charm, sharing that characteristic myself. He’ll do for you, but I wish he didn’t live so far away.”
What mattered charm?
Hamish was clever enough to steal back letters undetected, but more than that, he was honest. I’ve killed with my bare hands, Meggie. This battlefield violence appalled the man who’d committed it, while the charming Sir Fletcher had been proud of a scheme that reduced Megan to marital chattel.
“London is hard for Hamish,” Megan said. “Did you notice that when we went out to Richmond, his coachman avoided taking us past Horse Guards? Hamish doesn’t belong to the clubs where former officers congregate, and he’ll never attend one of Wellington’s dinners. I can’t fathom exactly how or why, but I suspect part of Hamish MacHugh is still fighting the French.”
Or his own officers, may a blight afflict the hypocritical lot of them.
“St. Just took years to come home,” Anwen said. “I’ll visit you in Scotland. That’s a warning. You will marry Murdoch, won’t you? You’re not just using him to bring Sir Fletcher up to scratch?”
“Sir Fletcher is not what he appears to be, Anwen. Keep your distance from him.”
Anwen played a right-hand C major scale, the one that used only the white keys. That seeming simplicity actually made it one of the harder scales in Megan’s opinion, the fingers having no black keys to create a tactile frame of reference.
“This instrument needs tuning,” Anwen said.
“It always needs tuning when Beth gets in a Beethoven mood. The season drags on forever when a woman approaches thirty.”
A soft tap sounded on the music room door.
“Enter,” Anwen called.
The season could drag on forever when a woman approached twenty-six too.
Hamish followed the butler into the room, Lord Colin at his side. Anwen was off the bench and dipping curtsies mid-scale, though Megan would have gone musically mad rather than finish on any note other than C.
“Just the gentleman we were discussing,” Anwen said, twining her arm with Colin’s. “I’ve been meaning to ask your lordship’s opinion regarding a certain volume of French poetry. Won’t you accompany me to the library? I have difficulty reaching the highest shelves.”
Anwen would cheerfully scamper up any ladder or climb the very doorjamb to get to a book of her choosing. She led Colin from the room, blathering about French and Latin and Megan hardly knew what, for Anwen—dearest of sisters—had left Megan alone with her intended.
Who did not look pleased to find himself alone with her.
“Lock the door, Your Grace,” Megan said.
Hamish crossed his arms. “Meggie Windham, what are you about?”
Megan veered around him, rather like dodging behind an oak, and locked the door. “What are you about, Hamish? You’ve treated me like somebody’s wallflower auntie this week. I can understand a man needing to polish his waltzing, but you are wickedly skilled with kisses. Your embraces are fierce and tender, your very scent beguiles my knees into fluttering. If reducing me to begging for your favors is a foretaste of your husbandly stratagems, then we are about to have a very heated discussion.”
His brows twitched down. “Beguiling, you say? My scent beguiles your knees?”
Megan got hold of the leather belt holding his sporran about his waist and tugged. “Spare me your maidenly vapors, sir. You carry the scent of heather and open skies, fresh sea breezes, and warm peat smoke. No gentleman has ever smelled as enticing as you do. I dream of your scent and wake up with my pillow between my knees.”
“Blessed St. Andrew, Meggie. You mustn’t tell me such things.”
Hamish didn’t smile often, but he was smiling now. A great beaming wonder of a smile—aimed at his boots.
Megan pushed him onto the settee, and he took a seat. Obliging of him, when he’d likely stood against entire French regiments.
“We are all but engaged,” she said, straddling his lap. “Why aren’t you stealing kisses? Why aren’t you meeting me behind hedges and in the mews, sampling my charms?”
She stole a few kisses, lest he forget the joy to be had in such larceny.
Hamish tasted of mint and patience. The mint was lovely, while the patience … Megan had had enough of patience.
“Meggie, dearest darling, you’re setting a match to a powder magazine.” He had a hand on eac
h of her biceps, and that was not where Megan wanted his hands.
“Your sporran has to go,” Megan said, kneeling up and working at his belt. “Sporrans are lovely in their place, and I understand they hold a flask, a comb, funds, but now is not the—Get this off, Hamish.”
She wasn’t accustomed to giving orders, but it occurred to her that Hamish was accustomed to taking orders. Why hadn’t she grasped sooner that he was waiting for her to show some preference in the matter of his kisses?
He unfastened the sporran with a gratifying economy of movement. “Has anybody told you that you have a latent streak of ducal command about you?”
Uncle Percy had dragged Hamish to a levee two days ago, a ducal command Megan approved of.
“I am the granddaughter of a duke, and I’m about to become a duchess, I hope.” She set the sporran aside and settled onto his lap. “That’s better. I am about to become a duchess, aren’t I?”
Hamish kissed her, sweetly, patiently, adoringly.
Megan wanted to smack him with his sporran. “That is not an answer, Hamish.” Though his kisses were lovely. Loving. Decades of his kisses would not be enough, particularly not when paired with the slow, smooth glide of his palms over her back, or his hand, gently clasping her nape.
“Cease your nattering, Meggie mine. Kiss me a while, would ye please?”
She could kiss him forever, could melt into the warmth and tenderness of him, the sure sense that this man was her mate in all ways, and yet, he held back. Megan got a fistful of his hair, cupped his jaw, and plundered his mouth without mercy.
Plundering could be a mutual endeavor. Hamish was stealthy, was the trouble. Megan tasted, he teased. She tactilely shouted demands, he whispered back encouragement. Desire rose, along with frustration and determination, until Megan was so muddled, she declared a temporary ceasefire and curled against Hamish’s chest.
“You have driven me daft, Hamish MacHugh.”
And Megan had driven him to desire, at least. Through her skirts and the single thickness of his wool kilt, she felt the unmistakable evidence of his arousal.
The Trouble With Dukes Page 15
